1. Technical Field
The invention relates to nanotechnology. In particular, the invention relates to electrical interconnection between nanoelectronic circuits and conventional electronic circuits.
2. Description of Related Art
A consistent trend in semiconductor technology since its inception is toward smaller and smaller device dimensions and higher and higher device densities. As a result, an area of semiconductor technology that recently has seen explosive growth and generated considerable interest is nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is concerned with the fabrication and application of so-called nano-scale structures, structures having at least one linear dimension between 1 nm and 200 nm. These nano-scale structures are often 5 to 100 times smaller than conventional semiconductor structures.
A growing area of nanotechnology is nanoelectronics. Nanoelectronics includes nano-scale electronic devices, such as nano-scale field effect transistors (FETs), p-n diodes, light emitting diodes (LEDs) and sensors, to name a few. Nanoelectronics may coexist with conventional electronics (e.g., microelectronics) in the near future as so-called ‘hybrid’ electronic integrated circuits, i.e., electronic circuits that comprise both nanocircuitry and conventional electronic circuitry. As such, their coexistence will need ways to interconnect the nanoelectronic circuitry to the conventional electronic circuitry within so-called hybrid electronic integrated circuits in a compatible way that is reproducible in a manufacturing environment.